Ep.7 – The Blind Date - A Night from HELL

Episode Notes
A reluctant young woman decides to throw caution to the wind and go on her first date, what's the worst that could happen?
The Blind Date by Joe Solmo
http://pennedinblood.com
Music by Ray Mattis
http://raymattispresents.bandcamp.com
Produced by Daniel Wilder
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Transcript:
Cassandra wasn’t like most teen girls. She didn’t enjoy the same things that the other girls in school did. She didn’t chase after boys, or dressed in the latest fashions. It was a rare sight to see Cassandra wearing make-up on a day other than Halloween.

That was the only holiday that Cassandra cared about. She felt that was the only night she could actually be herself. She loved reading gothic horror, curled up on her bed. Her bookshelf was lined with the classics, Dracula, Frankenstein, and Dr. Jekyll to name a few. The newer romantic take on the classics made her feel sick and angry. They were taking her beloved stories and twisting them to attract the same people she loathed and escaped into the books from.

Cassandra had one person she would really call a friend. A girl two years older than her started talking to her in the lunch room one day. Betty was her name. She dressed in all black clothes and dyed her hair as black as she could. Cassandra adopted her look almost instantly. They shared a lot of the same interests.

The only difference between the two was that Betty was interested in the opposite sex. She occasionally had a boyfriend, and the time the two friends shared sometimes was strained, but Cassandra really didn’t worry. She would just dive into a book until Betty and her boyfriend of the week broke up.

Betty had a volatile temperament, especially with her boyfriends. None of her relationships lasted a month. One time she came over to Cassandra’s house with a black eye. Her boyfriend at the time, Randy punched her in the face. Betty said she cut Randy with a switchblade she carried at all times. Randy lived a few towns over so Cassandra never met him, or seen him to verify the story.

“Come on Cassandra, a boyfriend might do you some good,” Betty chided one time. She laughed it off at the time, but truthfully sometimes she did think about it. Having someone to share her dreams with, other than Betty, wouldn’t be so bad, she told herself.

After almost a year of joking around Betty started to get insistent, especially after meeting her newest boyfriend Brandon. She had met Brandon on a new Goth dating site. Cassandra warned her against it, but Betty argued that the site screens all the people on there. On their first date Cassandra followed them, just in case, but everything went well.

“Cassandra come on, just make a profile, then you can see who’s on there. You never know, maybe your future husband is on there,” Betty said applying her black lipstick in Cassandra’s vanity mirror. She had a date with Brandon later that evening and was getting ready at Cassandra’s house because she could borrow her clothes.

“Maybe it’s not a husband you’re after, they have women too,” Betty said with a laugh and playfully tossed the lipstick at her friend.

“Oh stop,” Cassandra said back.

“Well, what are you? Asexual?” Betty asked.

“I just think getting a boyfriend is more trouble than its worth. I don’t need some asshole calling me when I have fifty pages left of my favorite book,” Cassandra said as she pulled a black lacy dress from her closet. “Here, wear this one, it will make you look slutty. Brandon will love it.”

“I wouldn’t want to lead him on,” Betty said. They both looked at each other and smiles crept onto their faces. They both burst out with laughter. It wasn’t like Betty slept around, but if the mood struck her then she wouldn’t be shy with her boyfriend. It was cool for the guys to sleep with any girl they could, but if the kids at school saw Betty doing it they would call her a slut. That was probably why Betty dated boys from out of town, Cassandra thought.

Betty’s phone dinged with a text message and Cassandra used that interruption to check her hair in the mirror. It was time to dye her roots again. She would have to run out to the drug store. She heard Betty laugh, and looked at her friend.

“What’s so funny?” Cassandra asked.

“Brandon, he is so funny. He asked me if he should bring condoms,” Betty replied.

“You guys have only been dating for like two weeks, Jesus!” Casandra said.

“Yeah but he has been real good to me so far, he deserves a treat,” Betty said in a playful voice and slapped her ass.

“You’re too much,” Cassandra said with a smile and rolled her eyes.

A short time later, after Betty left, Cassandra sat in her room with a copy of In a Glass Darkly. It was the seventh time she read the collection of short stories by Sheridan Le Fanu. Her eyes kept drifting from the written word to her laptop Betty had left open on the end of her bed. After the third time she sighed and put the book down.

She typed in the web address for the gothic singles site Betty had used to find Brandon. I’ll only look around for fun, and to shut Betty up, she thought as she began to make a profile. She took a selfie with her cell and uploaded it to her profile.

Once that was done she browsed through a few men’s profiles looking superficially at them. She grew bored a few minutes later and put her phone down. She looked back towards her book, but she wasn’t in the mood, so she popped in the DVD of Ginger Snaps, her favorite werewolf movie.

After a few minutes a ding came from her phone. “Uh, Betty,” she said picking up her phone, but saw it wasn’t a text message at all. It was a notification from the Goth dating website. Someone had viewed her profile and wanted to chat.

She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t actually talk to a guy, could she? Even over the internet she wasn’t sure she would have the confidence enough to talk to someone in that manner. She tapped her finger on the thumbnail image to open his profile, but it instead it opened the chat window.

“Fuck!” she said as she saw the mystery guy was typing. She looked at the enlarged photo of him. He had shoulder length black hair. He wore a black leather jacket in his picture. She looked at the name attached to the profile. Jeremy, 19.

He was cute, she had to admit, as she scrolled through his information.

Ba-ding!
A new message from Jeremy. She tapped on the notification.
Hi there, I’m Jeremy and I love reading horror. I listen to goth music and just graduated. You look real pretty in your profile picture.
Even though he wasn’t there in person, she blushed anyway. No one ever called her pretty before, well except for Betty, but that didn’t count. Even her own parents, that mostly left her alone, never complimented her on anything.
“What should I say?” she whispered out loud as she looked at her phone. She began to type a message, then deleted it. After a few tries she finally got out what she wanted to say, sort of.
Thanks! You’re pretty too, I LOVE horror!
She looked back at her message after hitting send. “Oh God damnit!” she exclaimed. “You’re pretty too? What the fuck is wrong with me?”
She saw that he was typing back to her and she cringed imagining his response to her. She knew that she wasn’t ready to chat with a guy! She wasn’t cool like Betty. She wished her friend were here now to tell her what to say. She would probably tell her to send a pic of her boobs.
Um thanks…what kind of music do you listen too?
Well that wasn’t as bad as she thought. He just thanked her. She thought about what to say back.
Mostly local music. Have you ever been to The Freezer? She asked. It was a local club that she had been too. One of Betty’s old boyfriends had a band and they went a few times. Some of the bands she actually enjoyed, except for Betty’s boyfriends, they were terrible.
The Club over on 34th? I’m there right now. Chum Trail is playing tonight. They start in a half an hour, you should come out!
She hadn’t heard of a band called Chum Trail before. She thought about it, but she had never been there without Betty. She wasn’t sure she could do it. She quickly texted her friend to get some advice.
Are you coming?
Jeremy messaged her. She waited a few more seconds. “Come on Betty, you twat, message me back,” she said to her phone. A minute passed and still nothing.
Hello?
She felt bad for not messaging Jeremy back, but she was indecisive. She wasn’t the outgoing person Betty was and sometimes she was content just to follow in the wake of her friend. She sighed as she looked at her phone laying on the black comforter on her bed. Finally she couldn’t stand it no more and picked up her phone. She opened the messaging app and started to type to Jeremy that she couldn’t make it tonight, but some other time, but she only got two letters typed before she received a text from Betty.
WTF GO!
“I knew she would say that,” Cassandra said and let out the breath she didn’t realize she was holding.
OK
She typed it to Jeremy and flinched when she hit send. She could always not go and say something came up, anyway.
Sweet! I’ll be outside waiting for you!
Ah shit. Now she had to go. She jumped off the bed and looked into the closet her and Betty had destroyed earlier to dress Betty up. Now it was her turn. Although she was very apprehensive about going she had to admit she was excited as well. She fixed her hair in the mirror quick and then put on the black lipstic